Rising.

Even as a child I was sick, burdened by trauma I couldn’t name, and carrying the weight of chronic illnesses as well as undiagnosed mental illness. My early years were marked by chaos and confusion, but I pressed forward. It looked as if I’d fail at life but I graduated high school, played college ball, entered ROTC to pay for school, and set my sights on a military career. But life had other plans. The illnesses coupled with a devastating car accident shattered my spirit and my body—head trauma, a broken neck, a broken arm and mental health issues and ended any hope of military service.

I left with physical pain and emotional wreckage, I turned to drugs for relief. They gave me numbness, but also took everything: my confidence, my clarity, my will. A suicide attempt in the early 2000s landed me in a psychiatric institution. Even then I stayed focused on school and surviving. I graduated. I worked. I survived. That grit has always been there, even when I couldn’t see it myself.

Over the years, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, endured institutionalizations, and cycled through medications that gave side effects worse than the illness. Rheumatoid arthritis followed, compounding my suffering. Doctors contradicted each other. Friends faded. Family disappeared. At my lowest, I was dropped off at a homeless shelter with nothing but my “not yets.” I hadn’t died, not yet. I hadn’t given up, not yet.

But we do recover.

I spent 10 years in the rooms of recovery, learning how to live again. Even sober, I struggled—through fatigue, vomiting, weight gain, sedation—but I kept showing up. In 2013, I finally found the right medication, and my life started to bloom. Day by day, I built a new life. I rebuilt relationships. I scraped by financially, then landed a job with promise. I moved cities, survived COVID, lost loves, managed tragedy at work, got pulled into a decades-old cold case, watched my mother fight cancer, worked though a natural disaster, faced the damage and the pain and still—still—I stood up again.

I have lost mentors. I’ve lost homes. I’ve faced aging, queerness, heartbreak, devastation, and mental illness in a society that wants everything to look perfect. But I refuse to let the world destroy me. I’ve tried to leave this world more than a dozen times, and yet—I’m still here. Bloodied, but not gone.

And I believe this: If we could talk about our pain without shame, if we could say “I’m not okay” and be met with compassion, we could change everything. For ourselves, for our children, for our communities.

So I tell my story—not for pity, but for power. Because I am proof that broken is not the end. Recovery is real. Healing is messy. And even from the darkest places, we can rise.